


Granted

by peacehopeandrats



Series: Once There Was A Wish [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, F/M, Gen, Post-Series, Wishverse (Once Upon a Time), stayhomewrimo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 06:13:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23466676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacehopeandrats/pseuds/peacehopeandrats
Summary: The last thing Wish Rumple knew, he was being turned to dust and whisked away, but an instant later he realizes he is in an empty realm and hears a very familiar voice.An afterlife fic because Wish Rumple and Wish Belle need some closure for fk sake.Smut warning: Just skip Chapter 3 if it isn't your thing. No plot there on purpose and the rest of the fic is totally safe.
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Wishverse Belle/Wishverse Rumplestiltskin
Series: Once There Was A Wish [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1029305
Comments: 20
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

First came the sensation of crumbling, an ultimate coming apart that simply could not be undone. He remembered idly thinking he would be no more. How could he, if each particle of him was pulling from the others? There would be no going back from that. Had he spoken it aloud? He couldn't recall.

The fire came next, the orange light, absolute heat and roar of enclosed flames. Every particle of his being experienced it, as if his toes could see and his neck could hear, even though they weren't his toes or his neck any longer. He drifted and rushed to the flames and wondered idly how he could know it was happening at all.

Then there was the flash, a pure whiteness that lasted for less time than could be counted. Again he wondered how he experienced the sensation of it. On top of that, how could he know what was happening if he shouldn't be able to _know_ anything at all? He was no more. And yet...

Pure darkness enveloped him, a black as total and complete as could never possibly be experienced. Somehow the parts of him had found a void and somehow he was conscious of it. Was this to be his eternity? He thought of every deed he had done, each flooding back at once, layer upon layer in one complicated compilation of a memory. He deserved nothing else, he realized. In fact, he probably deserved much worse than the fate he found himself bound to now. Besides, it was better than the fire.

“Please!” Somewhere in the darkness a distant cry lingered, the sound coming to him the way a mist would feel, wispy and intangible. “PLEASE!” It came again and he knew it at once.

Belle.

Oh the beauty of that sound! No matter how pained, her voice was a balm, the tone a melody that left him feeling adrift, light as air and dancing in some imaginary wind. Her pleas seemed to lighten the darkness, brighten his being and made him feel whole again, even as he was caught in this current that was impossible to feel. 

It was the sound of crying that finally stilled him. His dried and dusty heart crumbled twice over again to know she was hurting and he was unable stop it. He imagined the sobs were the cries of a woman starved, the cluster of bones coming to his mind, making him want to scream into the void against the injustices she suffered. Belle never deserved this.

Rumplestiltskin turned to seek out the origin of the audible pain, then realized that he _could_ turn and froze where he stood. He hadn't thought to try and move in this place, since there wasn't a body to move with. It was dust, the very essence of nothingness. He lifted a hand and stared in awe, wiggling his fingers. They were pale compared to what he remembered and the sight startled him until he realized what he was seeing. It was his own skin, a skin lost long ago to the darkness.

Briefly he put his hand to his face, feeling for bumps and scales, but found none. His hair, too, had returned to the mild wave and smooth texture that he had almost forgotten.

“Goodbye, my love,” Belle whispered and Rumple spun on his heel, the sound so close it was almost deafening. It mingled with another, oh so familiar comfort, the trickle of water becoming clear as what he wanted most in all the realms was suddenly in his view, as if he had simply strode up from the castle doors. He smiled when he saw her gazing down into a perfect replica of their garden fountain, and whispered her name.

Belle stilled, eyes peering down into the water, the ripples the only movement around them other than the rolling fog that he now realized surrounded his feet. Oh, how he wanted to run to her, to lift her in his arms and kiss her, ravage her and never let her go. But he couldn't. She had to be a figment of his torments in this world, a creation meant to make him suffer as he had made others suffer. 

Could it be? He could hear the water, he had heard her cries, her cheeks glistened with tears, but certainly any of those things could be an illusion. “Belle...?” He had to know. He had to be _certain_.

She turned, her eyes widening as they found him. “You're real... you're here...” She said hesitantly, pushing away from the fountain and staggering to her feet. Slowly she stumbled in his direction and he resisted the urge to reach for her, terrified that his hand would pass through her form and prove that it was made of the same intangible mist that surrounded his feet.. He nodded at her, the motion all he could allow himself in the fear of losing her to a single breath.

“Rumple? It's you... It's really you?” The words came with a touch. An actual sensation that he could feel and it nearly broke him all over again.

He nodded a second time, feeling his body quiver with the joy at having found her. “Yes, Belle. It's me.” Somehow he managed a steady tone.

Her eyes blinked up at him, then drifted over his form, filling with confusion as she studied him.“But how?” 

“I... I don't know,” he said flatly, honestly, as confused about his existence as she was. “In one breath I was gone, the next, in a blaze of light, I was here.” 

He wanted her. Oh, how he wanted her. He wanted to wrap himself around her and pull her to his chest and never, ever let go of her. His muscles... His body? His form. Perhaps that was the best idea, the thought... All of him wanted to feel all of her in a way that was pure love, pure togetherness, more a longing than a lust, though the lust, he was sure, would certainly come. 

Rumple swallowed when he realized she must know everything. She had been crying over him. She must have seen it all. The things he had done, the monster he had truly become. She could never want him now the way she had in the castle.

As if she could read his thoughts, Belle moved forward, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him tightly against herself. Her lips sought his and met them with a passion born of a long-awaited reunion. The intensity made him pause, stunning him so purely that he found not a thought in his own mind until it suddenly didn't matter any more. His doubts and fears washing away as he responded, at first on instinct and then with an equal passion.

In that moment everything around them flashed with the most brilliant light that was all colors at once and yet no color at all, joy filling him in a way he had never thought possible.

True love's kiss, he realized. He was finally home.

When they parted, Belle looked into his eyes, her smile as full of love and joy as he knew his own must be showing. “Come with me,” she said, “There's someone I want you to meet.”


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t possible to say when the void and mist replaced itself with a calm beach, though it was obvious as it was happening. He first noticed the give of the ground beneath his feet, shifting with every step. As he walked, the fog at his ankles swirled and faded to reveal golden granules that sparkled in a light that shouldn’t exist. Except that it did, in the form of a glowing sun that hovered above him in a brilliant blue sky that had somehow pressed the darkness away. The sound of the fountain shifted last, its trickle seeming to sputter with an unnerving slowness until he realized it had morphed into the gentle brush of waves on the shore.

“Where are we?” Rumple’s words were a mere breath that made Belle squeeze his arm where she clung to it.

“I told you I wanted you to meet someone,” she insisted.

Farther down the shore, he could just make out a form, some odd sort of lump in the distance that wobbled and contorted as it moved. Two parts of it rose and fell at strange intervals until they finally separated just enough for onlookers to make out the shapes of two familiar people, walking arm in arm toward them.

“We’ve met,” Rumple grunted, though he found that he wasn’t at all averse to facing his counterpart again.

Belle giggled. “Well, that wasn’t who I meant, but we can say hello.” She gazed into his eyes, studying them intently.

He nodded. “I certainly owe him an apology.”

At this, Belle stopped walking, reached up, and cupped his face. With a feather-light caress, she turned his head away from their doubles and forced him to focus only on her crystalline eyes. “You can’t blame yourself for what you were made to do.”

“I know that,” he said easily, raising his voice for the benefit of the two who had now almost met them. “I expect we all know that now.”

“Funny how this whole afterlife thing works,” the other Rumplestiltskin… no Gold, said calmly, straightening his back in a manner that puffed his chest forward. “You get here the rest of it doesn’t matter. Alice hoped this would be a place where everyone could just forget everything in the world. She’d be happy to know she was right.”

“I, um…” Rumple gestured at himself. “I know I shouldn’t be sorry for bringing the two of you back together, but… I still feel it needs being said.”

Standing across from him, arm draped over her husband’s, Belle Gold smiled at him. “Well it shouldn’t need to be said. Not any more,” she insisted before gazing up at her Rumple. “We all needed each other, we just didn’t know it.” 

“That’ll surprise the Charmings,” Gold chuckled back.

“And everyone else who doubted us,” Rumple added. “To think all the torments we were put through could lead us here…”

The words drifted off into the gentle breeze, he couldn’t admit the rest to himself, or his _other_ self, or any form of Belle. He knew he was meant to be lighter in this place, the weights of his deeds lifted from him and the gift of peace granted in place of the darkness, but a small corner of that weight still pressed on him. He didn’t deserve to be here, not after all he had done.

“So,” his counterpart cheerfully piped up, looking around their seemingly infinite shore. “Are we all here to meet the same someone?”

“Well, he isn’t exactly predictable,” Belle tried to explain as Missus Gold squinted off into the distance in search of whatever company had them waiting.

“In that case, anyone for a picnic, or… do we even do that sort of thing now?” Gold gestured at the area they stood in as he spoke, his eyes sparkling, his voice light. Picnics must have been something of the other couple’s past, because his wife seemed to light up at the suggestion. The glint in her eyes one Rumple was all too familiar with, though _he_ had never acted on it.

His own Belle shrugged. She gave the others a polite acceptance of their idea even though she was clearly as uninterested with it as he was. “We can at least sit while we wait,” she said. “It’s a beautiful spot.”

The four settled in the sand, separated by the space of an arm span or two, and fell into a pleasant silence that was occasionally punctuated by adoring whispers. They each had much to catch up on, but urgency didn’t seem compatible with their new situation and so conversations moved slowly. Contact was what was important and within moments Rumple found his head in Belle’s lap, eyes closed against the sun as she ran her fingers through hair that was unfamiliar to her. After an immeasurable amount of time, she giggled and bent down to whisper in his ear.

“I guess we aren’t exactly alike.”

Rumple opened an eye and flicked his gaze from her beautiful face to the beach beside them, where the Golds were settled in exactly the opposite position. “Used to reading that way?” He asked the question with cheer, unashamed to dive into a personal history that he had no place in.

“We did,” Missus Gold told him with a grin, then frowned at her counterpart. Her head tipped one way, then another until she could hold in her query no longer. “How did you read? I mean… where did you put the book?”

His Belle shrugged. “If we were inside, I used the arm of the library lounge, but in the garden there was a stand for me to use. He made it of stone and added it to the fountain. Sometimes it was just small enough to hold-”

“Bet it wasn’t small often,” Gold said, his tone suggestive. The comment got him a slap from his wife.

“Not a bit so,” Rumple answered, the same implication in the words, which earned him an equally playful smack from his own Belle. “And no, nothing alike if you think the size small,” he added, then quickly sat up to prevent another strike, laughing as he scrambled away.

Belle pretended to growl in frustration and struggled with her dress in order to find her footing. The moment she was upright, she leapt at him, then squealed with delight as he bolted away. The Golds forgotten, Rumple raced down the beach at whatever speed would keep him just beyond Belle’s outstretched arm. It felt strange not to worry of her chances of stumbling or the trouble he could get into running while watching behind him. Under the warm sun, their worries forgotten, they played like children, reveling in the pure joy of the game.

It could have been this way, Rumple thought as he watched the twinkle in his Belle’s eyes and listened to the bubble of her laughter. They could have read every book in their library and had snow fights in the winter. He could have held her in his arms as she cried out beneath him. They could even, in time, have had children. Instead, when faced with the choice between his one true love and the powers that consumed him, he gave in to what controlled him in the past and cast his salvation aside, never to see her again. Rumple froze as the image of that dark cell filled his mind, felt the bones in his hands as he grasped at her dust covered cloak. He had done it all, not just the torments he devised for the others. He had started everything.

The thought shattered from his mind as Belle collided into him, sending them both tumbling to the ground in a heap of arms, legs and fabric. She laughed as he sputtered and puffed hair from his face, but her eyes darkened with worry when she read his expression. “Rumple… What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he lied. 

Belle’s brows knotted and he knew he hadn’t fooled her. He never could, no matter how badly he wanted to protect her from the monster he had been. “I was thinking about the castle,” he admitted at last. “Of what I stole from you by sending you away.”

“Nonsense.” Her head tilted to the side and if they hadn’t been tangled, he knew her finger would be waggling at him as well. “You might have been a grump now and then, but you were always good to me.”

Rumple reached a hand to her cheek, then watched his own fingers trace the line of her jaw and trail down her neck. His lips felt dry and he licked them with a nervous flick of his tongue. It wasn’t the time, he told himself, this wasn’t what he wanted, but then, would he get another? How did they know what would come from this moment on?

“Belle…” His voice sounded like gravel in his own ears and he swallowed his nerves to try again. She deserved better than a sniveling coward. “Will you let me give you what I couldn’t before, the night I sent you away?”

“What do you mean?” Belle’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and her head turned to the side. Temptation to press his lips there swelled within him, but he fought against it. Rumplestiltskin would do nothing without her permission. Though she had begun their courtship, he would not go further unless they went on together.

Rumple took in a breath and closed his eyes in the hopes that strength to say the right thing could be found in the false invisibility the darkness would bring. “You know what I mean,” he whispered. The words hung between them, but he felt her body’s twitch against his. It was a flick of understanding and he pressed on quickly, before fear took the ability from him. “I know we aren’t in the library, or by the fountain, or in my rooms in the west wing, but we have peace here and a beauty so near to your own… So the trickle of falling water has become the hush of rolling waves, but we don’t know what might happen-”

He felt a finger press lightly to his lips and opened his eyes to find her blue pools locked with his gaze. 

“We have all of the time that was ever made,” she whispered.

“Moments ago I was ash in a fire,” Rumple reminded her, his voice pleading his case, begging her to realize his fears as she always had. “We don’t know what we face, but right now I can feel you. Your weight presses on my chest, your finger was just on my lips…” He caught her hand in his own and brought it to his lips, kissing the finger that had silenced him. “We feel this now. Will we feel again?”

Belle’s eyes danced in tiny flicks that gave away her study of the brown in his own and he granted her the time to learn whatever she could of his sincerity and his need. There was not enough room in his soul for the love he felt for her. It filled him to overflowing and spilled endlessly from him, refusing to cease. She must see it, he knew, as she had seen it all those years before.

“Rumple, I…” She untangled herself from him and moved to his side, glancing at the Golds who were only yards away. “We’re hardly alone and what if he arrives before-”

“I want to know you, Belle. I want you to know me, to feel what we can, _while_ we can.” He also looked down the beach at the couple who had quite obviously not stopped to question their location or company. A sigh escaped him, though he fought to contain it. “I know this is far from where we hoped we would be, but wherever we go from here, if things remain as they are, I will surround you in everything that we wished for, no matter the cost.”

“You have a son, Rumple,” she teased, though her thoughts were clearly in a place distant from humor. “You must know what it feels like to-”

“But I won’t know _you_.” Rumple felt a tear form on his cheek, but refused to wipe it away. “Since you came to my life, it has been all that I wanted. _You_ Belle. Never another. I don’t want our last intimate touch to be the sting of my hand on yours as I swat you away…”

He could see their last moment together replaying in her mind, her eyes glazed over as she became lost in the memory, as he had done so many times. 

_She returned, a basket of straw dangling from her arm, smiling over the fact that she had beaten him at his own game. They both knew this was her acceptance, as much as it was his. The unspoken need for each other could be hidden no longer and she sat beside him, wiping their self imposed boundaries with a single flick of her skirts. Voices dissolving to whispers, then breaths shared between them, their lips met, then parted and the world spun around him in a rush of passion, worry, desperation, and realization. He pulled away, taking a breath to still the magic as it boiled and churned, willing it to settle inside of him. True love’s kiss, they realized at once and a decision had to be made. The possibility of rescuing Baelfire from the fate that had befallen him or a life of pure happiness with someone they loved? The curse would come without him, he decided, and he hadn’t used magic in ages. He told her of his plan and made her promise that when the time came, she would allow him to be jailed in the one place where the curse could not touch him. It was the only way he could find her in the new realm and when he did, they would have their love to cure her. Commitments made, she reached for him again, fingers trailing up the leather of his pants until he scooped her up in his arms and whisked them to the library to see to her comfort. There, by a crackling fire, he pressed against her and felt the heat that didn’t come from the flames. It called for him, begged to be devoured and the passions of the darkness surged forward just as Belle reached to cup the growing bulge between them. His eyes flew open, staring at the tender flesh, flushed with desire and he realized a beauty such as hers, something so pure to the very core, deserved better than the ravenous attentions of a beast. He drew from her, slapping her hand from his body and strode away, keeping his back to her as she pleaded her concerns and her needs. She loved him, he knew, but it was his love that would ruin them. The burning desire he held for her could not be contained to gentle thrusts and feathery kisses, it would tear her to shreds as he ground it into her, giving her nothing in return but pain and the emptiness of fulfillment. They fought, he pretended to have changed his mind, though they both knew it to be a lie, and in the end she left. And she died._

“Please…” he whispered once he knew she had weighed the past against the present. “Let me give you what I couldn’t then.”

“I knew _that_ Rumple,” she said, running her fingers through his softer, silkier hair.

“ _He’s_ the man you fell in love with…” Rumple sighed and started to pull away, but found himself caught by Belle’s firm hand.

She studied his face and then watched her hand travel the length of his sleeve, down his chest, to circle a single button before slipping it free. When her eyes met his again, they shone as they had long ago. “Half of the man I fell in love with,” Belle said at last. “It’s only the _outside_ I don’t know. Who you are, who you have always been, is the man underneath.”

“I would give you eternity to learn the outside,” he murmured as he ran a hand through her hair and let his fingers brush the back of her neck. “If you’ll let me.”

Tucking her lower lip between her teeth, Belle nodded and Rumple felt the surge of their love press at the weight that had held him to his past. It lifted just enough that he could hold a hope of belonging here. Someday. It was possible, he realized when their lips met and he dissolved into the kiss. With Belle to hold him, he would find the way.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my attempt at a purely smut fic, created in honor of Sprite's birthday. There /is/ a hint of backstory here, but the chapter was designed to be skipped over with no loss to plot for those who prefer to move on.

Rumplestiltskin felt as if every particle that made him was caught in a hurricane. His Belle, his beautiful, kindhearted, forgiving Belle, the woman who waited for him and begged for his salvation, was removing his vest with painful slowness, and his body, or whatever passed as a body in this realm, was reacting. 

“Belle,” he whispered as he caught her hand in his. “We-”

The sudden grip of her hand on his wrist startled him into silence. “No,” she told him sternly. “You stopped me once…” She lifted his hand to her lips and planted a feathery kiss on each finger, speaking slowly between the kisses. “With this hand…. I won’t… Let you do it… Again.” Her mouth sank over one of the fingers, hot and moist, and she let her tongue swirl around it before pulling away to gaze at him with lustful eyes. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

He growled out a chuckle and leaned forward, guiding her to the sand. “You just seemed… unsure,” he whispered as he settled his body over hers, hand cupping one breast to make her moan in pleasure.

“Well, I wasn’t imagining company when I envisioned us together at night.” Belle’s cheeks blushed fiercely as she admitted her secret.

“Dreams or _day_ dreams?” Rumple lowered his head to nip at her earlobe, letting the breath of his question drift over her skin. When she hissed he soothed the sting with a flick of his tongue and trailed kisses along her exposed neck.

Beneath him, Belle moved her hips, catching the swell of his need and pressing against it. “A little of both,” she teased. “We did have the whole castle to ourselves and you left me alone _so_ often.” 

The unspoken suggestion sent images flying to Rumple’s mind and he pulled away in surprise. Stepping easily into his impish innocence, his hand left her chest and flew to his own as he let out a gasp of mock horror. “My dearest, are you implying that the time you spent alone in _my_ castle was spent in activities _other_ than those assigned to you?”

Belle’s head teetered playfully. “I might have,” she confessed as her hand caught the back of his neck and guided him back to her. “Once or twice.” She kissed him then, her tongue parting his lips and exploring every inch of his mouth, dancing with his until he pulled away, gasping.

His head swam at the idea of her finding pleasure without him, thinking of him as her fingers slid between her own moist folds. Rumple imagined her breasts lifting as she panted and her body writhed, the scent of her need filling the air. Lips suddenly dry, his tongue flicked out to wet them, which only made him yearn to taste her, to flick the tip of it against her small, hard nub and run the length of it over her wet, inner flesh. “I see…” The words were thick with need, hard and gravely. “And where, precisely, did such things happen?”

As he spoke, Rumple trailed his hand along where their bodies pressed together and lifted himself up so that he had just enough room to tug her skirts higher. It was a slow and sensual movement, he wanted her to feel the brush of it on her skin as it crept upward and was rewarded with a shiver when her thigh was exposed. The care in his movements held the dual purpose of keeping at lest part of her dress between her body and the sand, but the deepening blue of her eyes told him the sensation was what she craved. Shifting his weight, he repeated the gesture, watching her face as her eyes closed and she bit at her lower lip. By the time the front of the dress was gathered at her stomach, she was almost writhing beneath him.

Rumple lowered his mouth to her exposed neck and ran his tongue just below her ear, kissing at the curve of her jaw before whispering against her skin. “My love…” It was a question, a gentle reminder, heavy with lust.

“Hm,” she moaned and guided his body back over her own before opening her eyes to meet his. “You _did_ have a rather large… table,” she teased. “And polishing it could be such hard… hot… work…”

He felt his body twitch in answer to the sultry tone, his hand cupped her breast again and his lips kissed the exposed flesh, wishing he could simply tear the thing away and ravish each soft mound. “And the rest of my… estate?” Rumple teased as his attentions moved from one creamy curve of skin to the other.

Belle lifted her head until her lips were a breath from his ear. “Later,” she whispered, the air sending a rush tiny bumps over his skin. “I need you, Rumple. Please.”

Again his hips lifted so that his hand could slide over the flesh of her inner thigh and settle between their bodies. He needed to touch her, do drive her to the brink before he entered her. The final layer of fabric was wet with her need for him and he pressed his fingers against the hot fluid, sliding them over her in gentle strokes. 

Her chest heaved and her body rose to meet his, chasing his touch and pressing them together. One of her own hands grasped at the leather of his pants, clinging with a claw-like desperation before frantic fingers fumbled at the point where his shirt hid beneath.

Rumple knew what she needed and pulled from her, kneeling up so that they could both work at the fastenings of his clothing. Leather was a nuisance in times like these, especially with the swell of his desire stretching the material tightly across his body. Behind them, he could hear the breathy moans of the Golds and the sudden, gasped cry of his own name. They were further along then, he realized as he imagined his hard length pressing deep into the core of Belle’s burning heat. In a sudden, inexplicable competitive rush, Rumple finally released himself from his clothing and lowered to meet her, hovering just at her entrance as their eyes locked together.

There was a hesitation between them until he heard his own voice begging for Belle in muffled and frenzied moans. It seemed to drive her passion as much as it had fueled his and in a single breath she had lifted her hips to brush herself against him, wet heat spreading over his skin where they met. He could wait no longer and guided himself inside of her, thrusting deep as she cried out to him, body tightening around his.

He stilled for a moment, giving her time, reveling in the amazement of this gift they had been given. None of this should be possible and yet here he was, surrounded by her heat, buried to the very hilt and pressed tightly against her soft flesh. It was a miracle he refused to question.

As the couple behind them moaned their pleasures, Belle began to shift beneath him. He let her guide his pace, willing his control to last long enough to give her every pleasure in the world. As the distant cries increased, so did her urging of his thrusts and before long the sounds of each couple were equal to the other. Gasps and growls of heated pleasure joined and drew away again, mimicking each thrust and mingling in the air like the scents mixing beneath him.

“Belle,” Rumple moaned as he devoured her neck. He had to have all of her, every inch, be a part of him. “My love…”

Her answer was a cry as her body tensed, then pulsed, drawing him deeper, pulling him over his own edge. 

“Rumple!” His name traveled sharply over the sea as she exploded around him and he shot away with it, bursting into such a brilliant light that he was certain he had returned to the fire. He cried out into her neck and grasped her arms as if they were a lifeline, clinging to the one thing that kept him whole. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he ignored them, the electricity of their love too intense for any other thought but her being in his arms.

The sounds of their lovemaking echoed back at them in a different cadence and tone and he let out a breathy chuckle. “Guess I finally win,” he teased.

Belle laughed his name and nudged him, but met his eyes and gazed so deeply into them that she seemed to become profoundly lost, yet bound to him at the same time. In that moment he could easily believe in the possibility of pouring so much love into a single moment that it would cascade over a wounded soul and wash away its darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

The two couples spent some time recovering from their bliss, lounging in the sun, each Belle in her own Rumple’s arms. None of them considered the oddity of their situation, dressed as they were in their finest things, lounging on a sandy beach after having just shared such contentments only yards apart. The sun was warm and the sounds of the ocean soothing, and whatever sensibilities they once held seemed to have drifted somewhere beyond pointlessness. Privacy was a physical need easily cast away with their new existence. 

The Golds were the first to stir, Rumple propping himself up on an elbow to call back over his shoulder. “You two ready for company?”

Rumplestiltskin shrugged at his counterpart. “It seems we’re all still waiting. Might as well do the waiting together.” 

He stood and adjusted his clothing, then reached a hand down to help Belle to her feet. When they touched, the contact sent electric certainty through him. She was here, she was whole. There would be no more bones and no more separation. It didn’t seem at all possible, yet here they were. Belle let him guide her to her feet and took his arm, not as worried about her own clothing, which seemed to have fallen into place without her assistance.

“It’s all right,” she said, staring into his eyes. Somehow she had always known his mind, even when he hadn’t understood it himself. “We don’t ever have to be parted again.” Belle stretched to kiss his cheek and then guided him to join their other selves.

He didn’t want to say what truly haunted him, that it wasn’t their parting which plagued his thoughts. It might have consumed him once, but in this place worries like those simply didn’t belong. History was something intangible here, every moment was a point in time so distant that it was almost an afterthought. Rumple wanted to know how it all worked, how love and joy felt so real while some pains lost all importance entirely and still others refused to leave him. Thoughts of his recent history, the deaths and the tortures, drifted around at the edge of his vision like specks of shadow.

Belle guided him along the sand and together they settled down beside the Golds, all four in a line. Side by side, the group gazed up into a cloudless sky with no thought to seeking out objects for their eyes to follow. The color was pure and rich, but to Rumple no blue could ever equal that of Belle’s eyes. That blue was perfection and it was his again, forever.

“Why do I feel there should be birds when I also know that there won’t be?” Gold’s question hovered over them as they studied the vastness above.

“You get used to that after a while,” Belle assured him and Rumple squeezed her closer. 

Another comfortable silence settled between them, filled only by the gentle swish of waves. A feeling of rest covered Rumple like a blanket, seeping into him like the deepest of sleeps. He could exist here for minutes or centuries and never notice or care, so long as Belle was beside him.

There was no way to tell when the shadow appeared. The dark form covered them suddenly, yet seemed to take forever to creep into their notice. Just as walking from the well to this shore had faded from one sensation to the other, so did the round shape that took the sunlight from their faces. It came with the sound of shifting of sands and the warmth of a summer breeze, and Rumple thought that maybe he heard it approach before he saw it. Something walking, perhaps, for the steady sounds felt equal to those of feet pressing gently to the ground.

His eyes sought out the shadow’s origin only when a gentle puff of breath reminded him that such a shadow would certainly be connected to whatever was casting it. His gaze left the sky and tilted backward to take in golden brown tufts and round, yellow eyes above a triangular nose. Dark lips curved upward in a smile as the head of the shadow’s creator lowered in a formal bow of greeting, recognizable even at the awkward angle.

“I thought it best if I gave you some time.” A rich voice rolled over them, thunder and music all in one tone.

Belle quickly sat, turning to face the newcomer, her action mirrored by Missus Gold with a slight delay. “I don’t think any of us were quite sure,” Belle said, beaming. “But we didn’t doubt you’d come.” The words made no sense and yet seemed to hold the answer to everything they had been waiting for.

As a group, the four got to their feet and turned to face the shadow’s owner; a lion nearly equal to them in height and thickly built. He stood, still as a statue before them, kind eyes taking them in. There was no question of who the lion was or why he had come for them and the group kneeled before him. 

The lion returned the gesture with graceful ease. “You have all come a long way,” he said at last. 

Questions whirled through Rumple’s mind and he desperately wanted to look to the others for guidance, grasp Belle’s hand for support, or simply blurt out whatever came first to his tongue, but he found he couldn’t speak at all. There was no fear or cowardice in his inability, nor was it forced upon him. He simply knew that waiting was what was meant to be done, just as they had all known there would be no birds in the sky.

At a length of time determined only by the lion’s will, his voice rumbled again. “Rise.” The group straightened and he lifted his chin with an air of authority. “Rumplestiltskin.”

Rumple and Gold glanced at each other. The final Dark One feeling the pull of his name as a command, drawing him forward. As one, both men took a step, a single, coordinated movement that was not at all planned.

The lion tipped his head at an angle as he spoke to them, the gesture equal parts respectful bow and lecturing father. “The burden you carried throughout your lifetimes was a heavy one and one that only you could bear. No others could contain the darkness for so long, nor with such ability to convert its power for good.”

Rumple thought to interrupt, but was cut short before the notion caused his lips to part.

“You may not have succeeded at every trial put before you, but your efforts say more for your character than any words I could speak.”

Gold’s head lifted slightly and Rumple saw that his eyes were moist with tears. “Thank you,” the man whispered, released from the torments of his past with those simple words.

Filled with questions and guilt, Rumple could only nod.

“What you have suffered through can not be lifted,” the lion said, eyes shifting to Rumple for the briefest moment before refocusing on the men as a pair. “But it has earned you a place in a land made for only the noblest of hearts.”

The lion’s gaze left them then and turned to the endless reaching sands, where a single wave stood tall, following the shore all the way to the horizon. The top rolled infinitely yet never tumbled to the ground. Behind it, obscured in the mist and foam of the ever-moving sea, a ridge of mountains drew a line through the sky that had once been so open and eternal. Like moving crystal, the wall of water shifted and glinted in the sunlight, yet refused to disturb the sands below.

Rumplestiltskin knew exactly what realm had been summoned before him and he felt a twinge of sharp pain jolt through his body at the sight.

Eyes wide in surprise, Gold turned on his heel to face his wife, astonishment plain on his face. 

She gazed at him, her expression softening with love. “I told you.” Her lips curled up in a smile. “You’re a good man, Rumple.”

Gold looked back at the lion, shaking his head as he gestured at the sea wall. “I… I don’t deserve this honor,” he said.

“Oh, but you do,” the lion insisted before lifting his chin again. “As do the women who stood by your side.” He turned his head to face them as he called. “Belle.”

The women stepped up, Missus Gold taking her husband’s hand, Belle taking Rumple’s and squeezing it hard.

“There would be no darkness without light, nor light without darkness. It is a balance that is true in any realm. Though your journeys differed, your hearts held equal pain, your spirits equal determination. You are also welcome.”

“Thank you,” both women said as one, delivering a simultaneous curtsy.

Rumple’s heart felt as if it were being tossed around in the broiling sea before him, ripped from his chest and thrown out of reach to be dashed about in a place it would never come down from again. It felt yanked by a string, tugged and pulled like a fish on a line. This realm he had been offered was one of legend. It was beautiful and perfect and the lion’s own. Beyond the water he knew he would find only peace and happiness, existing forever in a land of perfection.

“No.”

All eyes turned to stare at him and Belle’s hand tightened around his own. She turned so that she properly faced him, eyes filled with concern. “Rumple,” she whispered. “This is-”

“I know who it is,” he snarled. Releasing her hand he strode forward, letting his boiling blood counter the lion’s unwavering calm. “And I know what he’s offering.” One more step and he stood close enough that he could reach a hand to the lion’s mane if he wished. Rumple glared down into the cool yellow orbs and hissed his final rejection. “I won’t go.”

Motionless but for a single blink, the lion remained silent for a time, studying him. He was waiting, Rumple knew, and he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of continuing.

While the Golds muttered behind them, Belle rushed to his side. “You can’t mean that. He-”

“Oh, I mean it,” Rumple said, gesturing at the wall of water without breaking eye contact with the lion. “That land is a place for those who are honored. It’s a paradise. I _don’t_ belong there.”

“You’re not the man I was,” Gold told him as he approached. “I was wrong about you before and I know that now that I’m here. _I_ was never the better one of the two of us, _you_ were. You gave up on magic _long_ before I did.”

Rumple spun on his counterpart, eyes narrowed in anger. “And how long did that last? How many did I _kill_ to have my revenge when I discovered what they’d done?” His arm snaked around Belle and drew her against his side, squeezing her close at the memory of her loss. “How many were tortured to teach them what it was like for her? How many more would have had the same fate if _you_ hadn’t stopped me?”

“It is because these things haunt you that I know you belong,” the lion said gently. “The man you _could_ have been would not be haunted by his actions. I know why you left the fallen where they perished. Those torments are no longer yours.”

“Being the villain because _he_ needed a hero isn’t an excuse.” Rumple turned to the lion while thrusting a thumb in his counterpart’s direction, tears streaming down his cheeks. He felt Belle’s hand reach up to brush them away, felt her head rest against him, but saw only the torments of his past. “I don’t _deserve_ to be released from it,” he insisted, feeling his voice crack from the weight of his emotions. “I won’t allow it.”

The lion looked from him to the others with a sigh and then nodded at Rumplestiltskin. “I will accept your decision,” he said at last. “But you can not remain here. This is a place for those traveling, you must choose your own destination.”

Rumple squared his shoulders and straightened himself to his full height. “I know where I want to be sent, but I have conditions.”

Gold came over and snatched him by the arm, pulling him aside with polite apologies to Belle and the lion. When they were a few paces away, he spun on Rumple, standing nose to nose with his mirror image and hissing into his face. “Are you mad? This isn’t someone you make deals with. An offer to go to his realm isn’t given twice.”

He yanked his arm from Gold’s grasp. “I _terrorized_ my realm,” Rumple snarled. “You may have been the ever-feared Dark One, but your reputation was made through posturing and few actions. I was _merciless_ in my quest for vengeance. The events that brought about my deeds might not have been my doing, but every scream of terror afterward _was_. I am the _only_ one who can hold the weight of those tortures. The number of deaths hangs over _my_ head. No one else’s.”

“And he’s offering you a release from that,” Gold snapped, thrusting a hand at the wave that refused to crash beside them.

“I _don’t_ deserve it,” Rumple repeated, emphasizing each word as if it were a sentence all its own.

Gold looked over at their Belles, the women clasping hands as they fretted about the men they loved, blue eyes flicking their way before turning downward. “What about Belle? You were _finally_ reunited. Are you going to abandon her now?” He snatched Rumple by the shirt and drew him closer. “She _waited_ for you,” he whispered, anger sizzling from every word. “You claim to love her, yet you’re so easily casting her away!”

“It can’t be helped.” Rumple swallowed the words as he spoke them, taking the pain of them into himself, owning his final betrayal.

With a flick of his arms, Gold released Rumple, casting the man aside in a heave of frustration. “Then you’re _not_ the better of both of us,” he snapped as he strode away.

Rumple watched him go, let the words seep into him as his counterpart reached for his wife. The Golds drew toward each other like two magnets and stuck fast, husband clinging to wife in an overflow of desperation while he glared over the woman’s shoulder at the man he’d tossed away.

From the moment he had seen the lion, Rumplestiltskin had known what was coming, but he had never expected to be granted his own entry into the lion’s realm. He knew Belle would be given the chance, along with the Golds, but never imagined the offer would be extended to his murderous self. Perhaps that was why he had felt so free on this beach, why he had insisted on enjoying Belle’s company as he had, on playing and teasing and reveling in every lighthearted moment. Some part of him must have known they would be forced apart again and was taking advantage of every moment they had left.

Taking a deep breath, he approached the group, eyes fixed on the lion. “I choose the underworld,” he said with certainty, body rigid with his unwavering resolve.

Belle gasped and rushed to him. “Rumple… You don’t know what you’re asking for.” Her hands ran over his chest as she spoke, her eyes pleading as she gazed up at him. He wrapped her in his arms and held her close, supporting her with all the love he could.

“I do. I owe my time to every life that I sent there,” he told her though he looked only at the lion. “ _I_ am their unfinished business and they deserve their release.”

The lion nodded his acceptance. “Very well, Rumplestiltskin.” The words came easily, as if his destination had been expected. Considering who was before them, the outcome of the entire dramatic exchange was probably already settled in the lion’s mind. “Name your conditions.”

“My castle goes with me, as it was when I left it.” Visions of bodies and bones filled his mind and he blinked them away. “And anyone within will be allowed to perform whatever action against me will release them from their torments.” He felt Belle’s hands clench into fists around his clothes and held her tighter still.

Another nod came, but the lion waited patiently, knowing there was more.

“Once I have cleared the castle and paid those in the underworld itself every debt that I owe, I want the children sent to me.” There was silence at this, even the lion blinking in surprise. Rumple’s lip curled in anger. “Don’t pretend that the young are spared that fate. I know there are many alone, confused, hurting in that retched place. They need someone to care for them, someone who will guide them on their journey to whatever better land they believe is beyond the one in which they are trapped.”

“Baelfire,” Belle whispered. The single name forcing Rumple’s eyes to close and his breath to catch. She always knew him, every part of him.

“Yes,” he answered softly. “Because of Baelfire.”

The lion nodded at this as well, even smiling at the condition. “Was there more?” The question pressed in a way that said the answer was already known.

“You’ll turn me back into what I was,” Rumple insisted. “And if you _truly_ believe I belong in your realm, you will allow the false-curse to be broken only when I have earned it and the time has come for me to reunite with Belle.”

Belle released him and turned to the lion. “I won’t let him go alone,” she blurted. “Send me too.”

Staggering backward from the shock of her words, Rumple reached out to clutch at her arm as much for balance as to press her into recanting. “No, Belle,” he murmured. “You can’t mean that.” He pulled her close again, tucking her under his chin, and stroked her back in frantic motions. “You have already waited so long, my love, but a life there… The underworld… You’ve done _nothing_ do deserve that place.”

She glared up at him, icy cold in her gaze that seemed fueled by an inner fire. “I _won’t_ leave you again.”

A heavy breath at their side made them both turn to the lion, who blinked slowly as he lowered his head. “I will send you both.” Rumple opened his mouth to object, but was swiftly cut off with the near shout of his name, the echoes of which rolled over the sand like thunder in order to quiet him. “Rumplestiltskin. You made your choice, just as it is also Belle’s decision to remain at your side.” 

The lion padded forward in slow strides. “You are strong and I do not deny your will to continue as you have vowed, but you must also remember the nature of darkness.”

“It can’t exist without light,” Belle whispered.

“Yes,” the lion agreed, lowering his head in a nod before lifting his chin at them. “Because you have chosen this fate, your existence in the underworld will have as much blessing as I am able to provide.” His next breath blew strong against them, sending Rumple’s hair swishing over his shoulders. 

Rumple felt a shiver run through him and his eyes flicked down to see the familiar scales covering his hands, nails black from the old darkness that once claimed him. Though it was what he’d insisted on, his heart sank with a twinge of guilt. He’d made the condition before Belle had insisted on coming with him. Now she would have only this monster to spend her time with for whatever length of eternity lay before them in their new home.

“Only the outer shell of your curse has been restored,” the lion announced. “It will be the sign of your readiness to return to this shore.”

“How?” Belle turned to him with sad eyes.

The lion smiled. It was the warmest thing Rumple had experienced, feeling it almost physically inside of his very being. “True love’s kiss, of course.”

“But…” Rumple stammered, too many questions coming to his mind at once. “We…”

“As your other selves have seen, the kiss of true love comes in many forms.” The lion glanced at the Golds, who lowered their heads to him. “What will release you from this form is not the love you share, but the love you feel for yourself. Belle will know when your guilt has been lifted, even if it is not a conscious thought. It will be her kiss that reveals you to be the man you truly are.”

They were being granted a gift, Rumple realized. The kiss of true love that would have otherwise been denied them.

Tears dropped from Belle’s eyes, even as she smiled in gratitude at the lion before them. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“What you have chosen will not be easy,” he said to both of them. “Rumplestiltskin must be prepared to face many of his own demons and you must be his light that shines truth onto each, but when you are ready, you will both be welcome in my realm.” The lion lowered his head, respecting their decisions with the deepest bow of their meeting.

Rumple released Belle and they returned the gesture before catching each others hands and squeezing tightly, pressing strength into each other as best they could.

The lion turned in place to walk from the water’s edge and as his body moved over the ground, it revealed a distant structure, built of sand. The castle stood as if it had always been there, glistening and solid. He looked from the Golds to Rumple and Belle, then gazed into the distance at the building before them. 

They were meant to walk forward, to enter the gates. Like everything else in their new existence, Rumple knew this to be true. He turned to his other self and gave a gentle smile, offering his hand. “I suppose I thank you,” he said as they shook once. “Without you, I wouldn’t exist.”

“And without you I would have lost Belle forever,” Gold told him with certainty. “I think we thank each other.”

The two smiled as their Belles exchanged hugs, wishing the best for the opposite pair, but all too soon the moment was gone and it was time to travel to whatever awaited them. Taking Belle’s hand, Rumple turned and took a step from the Golds, but froze in place, shaking his head. “No,” he said as he moved to face them again. “I need to see you safely home.” He looked at the lion, who smiled and stretched his head forward to indicate a dune of sand that was now protruding from the water, ready to carry the Golds above the rolling foam and beyond.

“We will see each other again,” Gold told him and he nodded, knowing it to be true.

With no other words to say, Mister and Missus Gold… Rumplestiltskin and Belle… The former Beast and his Beauty… made their way to the dune and began to climb. Hand in hand they rose above the wave and crossed beyond it, into the unknown.


	5. Chapter 5

When the Golds could no longer be seen, Rumplestiltskin turned his back to the endless wave, meaning to thank the lion for his kindness one final time, but the beach in front of him stretched into the horizon, empty.

“We’ll see him again,” Belle told him as she gently placed a hand on his arm. “He comes when the time is right.”

Rumple’s eyes drifted to the castle and lingered on the lowered gate as if it would reach out to cage him. “I… I know I asked for this, but… I don’t know if I’m ready.” His mouth was suddenly dry and he swallowed hard against his fears. Everything would be just as he’d left it, bodies still where they fell, cages in every room. The memory of walking past each of those bodies pressed at him, pushing him both to the castle wall and away from it at the same time. Hands wringing nervously, he rambled on. “Belle… I… I did some truly horrible things without you-”

“I know. I could see everything.” Her hand reached up to caress his cheek, brushing a stray lock of wavy hair from his face. “You did those things because you were angry and let the darkness consume you and it _had_ to consume you for things to be as they needed to be. But I’m here now. I’m not what you found in that cell, I’m here, _with_ you. We’re going to do this together, all right?”

It wasn’t all right. None of it was all right. The payment for all of his dark deeds was meant to be his price, not hers. “I can’t take you with me, Belle,” Rumple rasped. “None of this was your doing. You shouldn’t have to suffer the same fate as me.”

“I _chose_ to go with you. I agreed to forever and this,” she paused to gesture at the castle made of sand. “This is _part_ of forever.”

“I released you from that deal long ago,” Rumple reminded her. “And since I’m no longer the Dark One-”

Belle thrust her hands up to press her palms to each of his cheeks. The touch was hard, forcing his eyes to snap from the distance and focus only on the crystal blue of hers. She glared at him with the softness of love and the sharpness of a woman who refused to give up and Rumple’s heart melted instantly. She was perfection. If he had been run through with a blade she would have knelt over him and managed to heal his wounds all while lecturing him to continue fighting for his life. The woman in front of him was strength and softness, held both love and anger within her, and was tolerant yet allowed nothing to breach her barrier of decency. He didn’t deserve her.

“Stop.” The word cut through his objections and lodged somewhere deep inside whatever part of him still existed. “I _chose_ you. I will _always_ choose you. Every hero needs a villain. Do you remember saying that?” He nodded. “Good. Because you were right. You knew _exactly_ why you had been created and I’m not going to let you forget it. Everything that happened in there, every horrible thing you did since your escape from that prison, was forced upon you. Now you’re the hero and those deeds are the villain.”

“I had the choice Belle. I could have walked away.”

She scowled at him and released his face to fold her arms over her chest. “What? So now you’re deciding to negate _my_ sacrifice?”

Rumple reached out for her, pulling her body to his own, wishing to protect her from all of the wrongs he had done and all he was going to do from this moment forward. “Of course not,” he insisted.

Belle shoved him away and he blinked as she paced two steps from him, then turned a glare in his direction. “Do you have _any_ idea how hard it was to sit there? To see _everything_ and not be allowed to help you? I _need_ this, Rumple. I _need_ to be able to help you. Now more than ever.”

Sunlight glinted on the sand of the castle’s wall and they both looked over at the structure that seemed suddenly closer. The gate began to lift in the wall, just as any gate would, bars somehow holding their form as they shifted upward. There was no clank of metal to signal the structure’s settling into place, it simply held fast in position well above their heads. Beyond was their old garden, a remnant of the lives that were now long behind them. It was made entirely in sand on a scale that easily dwarfed what Rumple knew, a miniature replica of better times.

Belle’s hand was suddenly in his own, squeezing gently as if that would pass her strength through to him. “We’re going to do this together,” she murmured. “I won’t leave you.”

“Forever?” Rumplestiltskin couldn’t help tossing the question at her and felt the corners of his mouth turn upward in a smile.

“Forever,” Belle confirmed as she drew him forward.

* * *

Unlike the previous transitions Rumplestiltskin experienced in this new realm, walking under the gate was much more like stepping through a portal. One moment he and Belle were standing on a beach with the sound of rushing water in their ears, the next they were in the castle’s garden with the silence of death surrounding them as certainly as the high walls had done. The grinding of metal on metal soon replaced it, making Rumple spin with enough time to see the bars drop into place behind them. Beyond it, the beach was gone, replaced with the red tint of the underworld. He peered into the distance, wondering where in the underworld his castle had been deposited, but a haze prevented him from making out even the most basic of shapes.

They were here now, there was no going back.

Belle’s gasp made him spin back to face the courtyard, where dried and dead bushes overgrew their beds and blood stained the stone walkways. The fountains were dry and the air still around them. There would be no calm afternoons by the rose bushes, he realized. Everything here was as alive as the dust that covered each pile of bones. The bodies were exactly as he remembered them, some with shields, some with swords, some entombed in full suits of armor, but all as motionless as if they weren’t in a realm where the dead walked, spoke, and suffered until their grievances were attended to.

“I know them all,” Rumple found himself admitting. It was a truth from before his own death, but the memories had been sharpened because of it. The pain of his actions turned his voice soft, tone almost as gentle as if he were telling Baelfire a bedtime story. “I know what they came for and how I killed them. I remember leaving them because I thought one more body would erase the memory of finding you.” The confession flowed from him, pouring out as if he were a waterfall feeding a fountain. Words seemed to spill from him in endless torrents and land at his feet, splashing outward onto the stones well beyond. He couldn’t stop it. He didn’t want to. “Everywhere I turned I saw your bones... I heard them rattle when I tried to wake you… I wanted everyone to pay for your suffering, but I couldn’t admit _I_ was the one to blame.”

“Rumple!” The exclamation was soft and gentle as arms wrapped around him. “Nothing that happened to me was _your_ fault.”

“I sent you away. I was a coward, Belle. I was afraid to love, so I sent you away.” He gestured at the death in front of him. “If I hadn’t, none of this-” Rumple’s voice broke, but he didn’t need the rest of the words to convey what he felt. They both knew.

Belle let out a sharp breath of determination and looked around at their feet. “Right,” she said with certainty. “We’re not going to think about that any more. We came to start helping people and that is what we are going to do.”

“How?” Rumple choked on the word. “They’re bones, not bodies. They don’t even hold the animation they should for inhabitants of the underworld.”

“Maybe there’s a reason,” Belle told him, gesturing at the walkway that led to the castle’s large doors. Bones and armor littered the path, so thick in some places that it was impossible to make out the stones underneath. “Do you think you could handle all of them at once?”

All Rumple could do was shake his head.

“All right.” Belle nodded and turned to a knight on her left. She stared down at it for a while, then tentatively reached a hand to the tarnished helmet. “We need you to wake for us,” she told him quietly.

In the underworld time was an entity unheard of, it lasted in both the blink of an eye and for all of forever. It wasn’t a thing to be measured, so there was no way to know how long the two stood, waiting for something to indicate that Belle’s actions had been the right ones. After what seemed like a long enough moment, Rumple shook his head against the futility of Belle’s request. “I don’t think that’s how we do this.”

Belle turned to him, shrugging. “Then we find another way.”

The sound of clanking metal forced them to pause and when Rumplestiltskin turned he faced a tall, slender man with dark skin whose eyes glared down at him with an icy stare. “You have some nerve, Dark One,” the man grumbled. “Waking us to gloat.”

“He’s not the Dark One any more,” Belle announced. “That darkness is gone. From every realm. Rumple _chose_ to return to you to _help_ you.”

The knight’s eyes widened at this news, then narrowed at the man who had caused them to decay. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Rumple fidgeted nervously with the cuffs of his sleeves, then pointed a finger at the man’s chest. “Darious,” he muttered cautiously. “Or at least that’s what you told me your name was.”

The knight blinked. “I did.”

“And um… you were looking for someone I had taken prisoner. You called him a friend, but I suspect he might be… a lover? Husband?”

Darious glared at him. “We told no one of our plans for the future, how did _you_ come to know them?”

It was tempting to throw up the usual shell of lies and deceit but instead the truth reared its head at him and Rumple found himself unable to control the gentle upward curve of his lips. “I know quite a lot more about love than I let on in my lifetime,” he admitted as he took Belle’s hand. “This is my lovely lady, Belle. She was taken from me before you came and I’m afraid that without her I turned into the monster that all of you now know.” His hand swept out at the gardens behind them, indicating all the souls they had yet to wake.

“A fine story,” the knight huffed, doubt filling the words.

“And a true one,” Rumple insisted. “I returned to repay my debts to all of you.”

The fine point of a sword met Rumple’s throat before the final syllable escaped it. “You _owe_ us your _life!_ ” The cry echoed through the courtyard with such clarity that Rumple actually glanced around to see if it had literally woken the dead. Thankfully the bodies remained as they were. “Yet you come here with _words._ ”

“He comes with _actions_.” Belle stepped forward as if she were going to put herself between the blade and Rumple, though such movement wouldn’t have been possible. “He was given the choice of happiness and refused it. He _asked_ to come here, he _begged_ to ease the suffering of not only those he wronged, but others as well. Let him prove himself to you. What was the name of the man you loved?”

Those steady dark eyes flicked from Rumple to Belle and back again. “Stewart.” The release of the name did not ease the pressure of the blade.

“He’s in one of the dungeons,” Rumple told him immediately, the pale skin and baby-shaped face jumping to the front of his memory. “Handsome young man. Very determined. I believe he tried to accuse me of something I didn’t do.” His eyes narrowed at Darious and he hoped the other man would read the truth in them.

Finally the sword lowered and Rumple felt his body relax. Darious’ arms lowered to his side, his stance taking on the telltale sag of the misguided. “We believed you kidnapped my sister,” the knight admitted. 

“Well I didn’t,” Rumple told him, sneering the answer as he used to.

In answer to his frustrations, Belle’s hand rested near his shoulder and he felt her calm press a chill into the heat of his anger, soothing it instantly. “We all know that now,” she reminded him, her words gentle.

“I didn’t at the time,” the knight huffed. “Now that I’m here I know that she ran away with a group of traveling performers.”

“Ah.” Rumple nodded as if he’d known the answer too, though he hadn’t. He wondered if the sudden knowledge acquired since death was limited to subjects you knew in the past or if he, as the man’s tormentor, wasn’t automatically granted the right to it as part of his suffering. It would hardly be fair if he could hear every grievance with a simple thought. 

“So… can I see him?”

Snapping to attention, Rumplestiltskin gave a careful bow. “Of course,” he said in his most humble tone. “I would offer to let you follow me, but I’m afraid the view isn’t any better on the inside.”

“I won’t wait any longer,” Darious told him as he glanced at Belle. “I think you understand.”

The feel of Belle’s bones crept into Rumple’s hands as he relived the separation that would end both of their lives. He stumbled forward and the others gripped him, but he could see nothing through the stream of tears that quite instantly rose in answer to their kindness. Though he had no need for breath he suddenly felt strangled, throat clenching around the bitter taste of his own loss. Rumplestiltskin had hoped to suffer the torments of those wandering in this place and his first taste nearly brought him to his knees.

“Rumple? Are you all right?” Belle’s concerned eyes studied him.

“Fine,” he whispered, waving a hand in the air to shoo Darious out of his personal space. “Only a part of my new arrangement and it has passed. A small flicker of your own suffering.” Rumple nodded up at the knight with newfound respect and humility. “I _do_ understand the torments you suffered. I can take you there at once.”

“Thank you,” Darious said as they walked to the castle door.

* * *

The dungeon level was as frozen in time as the rest of the castle, bodies, bones, and random trinkets strewn haphazardly along their path. To the outsider each must seem randomly positioned, but Rumple could see every one of them as they fell and knew exactly what part of his wrath had taken them down. This would be the hardest part of reliving his past, seeing the destruction he had caused, knowing that each body he passed was a soul tormented, waiting to be released from the grip of his former darkness. He wanted nothing more than to touch them as he walked past, to grant them freedom and send them on their way, but he knew that was not how his arrangement worked. The deal would have been meaningless without this punishment. It was the only way he could move beyond his mind’s torments and accept his worthiness to move on.

As if reading his mind, Darious gestured at a skeleton they passed. “Aren’t you going to help them, too?”

“I’m meant to suffer here,” Rumple told him. “Not that you will believe me, but it was what I asked for. If I had known that my insistence would continue the suffering of each of these people we pass, I would have adjusted the arrangement. There is not one of them that deserves this fate to last longer than the others.”

The knight stared ahead of them, as if counting the bodies that littered their way. “If it is any consolation, I don’t feel as if I have been here for any length of time at all. You would have to ask them to be certain…” He glanced down at a pile of cloth, then looked away. “But I was not caught in an endless suffering.”

Rumple paused outside of the door that closed Stewart off from the rest of the world many years before. “Thank you, that does make this easier,” he admitted before gesturing at the door. “Can I ask you to wait here? I found my Belle in a similar state to what you will see inside. Thoughts of the one you love should always be of them whole and happy, not reflecting what we have passed to get here. Those images will darken you more than any other. I wish them on no one.”

Darious nodded once and turned his back to the door, then closed his eyes for good measure. Rumple caught sight of a single tear trailing down the man’s cheek and turned from it in hopes of bringing him peace. Together he and Belle entered the room where a pile of bones had collected under dangling shackles. Overwhelmed with the grief of finding Belle, Rumple dropped to the ground, weeping his apologies to the man he’d treated with as much cruelty as had been shown to his one true love, and with as little reason. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered as the other man’s desperation overwhelmed him. “I had no right…”

A trembling hand rested on his shoulder then and Rumple looked up expecting to find Belle, but instead met the young man he’d abandoned here years ago. “You are releasing us from your deeds,” he said as he drew the touch away. “It is more than others would have done.”

“I remember you,” Rumple told him. “All of you. Just as I remembered my Belle as I tortured you. When he asked for you I _knew_ where you were, remembered the pain in your eyes...” He felt his body quiver with the guilt it held and surrendered himself to it.

“Others might not, but I forgive you.”

Rumple blinked up at the young man, someone who had only begun to live when he had been captured, tortured, and left to become a heap on the floor. “How?”

Stewart shook his head. “I… I don’t know. I simply don’t hold the weight of life any more. It just feels as if everything I ever worried about has no meaning but to be a part of my story, including the hurt you caused.” He stood from the floor then to stare down at his former captor. “It doesn’t make your actions right, but it makes _this_ action carry meaning.”

The man stretched a hand down to Rumple and he grasped it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet again. Belle came to his side and wrapped her arms tightly around him, holding him close before reaching up and brushing the streaks of moisture from his cheeks. When she was finished, Rumple took a breath and looked at the cell’s door. “We’re going to come out now.” He called the words through the wood as he pushed at it, but was surprised when it all but flew from its hinges, revealing an awed Darious.

“Stewart…” The word was a prayer, one Rumple understood all too well and he stepped aside.

The men clashed with such fierceness that it seemed they might burst into an explosion of light or love or happiness, but their forms held even if their tears could not. Passionate kisses and endless endearments followed, making Rumple cling to Belle as they were forced to watch, denied an exit by the couple’s reunion in the door frame. It didn’t matter, he realized. Stewart had been right about the weights of the past. There was no shame in the depth of love, in the consumption and celebration of it, there was only the heat and light of the pure happiness created when two lives joined forever.

Warmth filled Rumple then as he held Belle to his side and realized just how long their forever would be. It set a spark somewhere inside of him that he could almost feel as it pulsed like the beating of a heart, expanding and contracting in a steady rhythm of brightness. The future contained everything for them and they would get there together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this first pair that is granted their right to pass on was chosen on purpose. Not only is this chapter written for Pride, but also was intended for posting on Loving Day. What is Loving Day? In the US, National Loving Day is held on the anniversary of the day that interracial marriage was finally allowed. The story of the Loving family is its own form of true love and I encourage readers to research it. Watch the HBO documentary The Loving Story or this bit from youtube: https://youtu.be/p5I_OUxnzR8


	6. Chapter 6

Time wasn’t something that could be measured in a realm between death and what lay beyond. Days and nights blended together in an ebb and flow that felt like an ocean tide carrying the light in a single, impossibly slow wave. One moment Rumple could feel the press of it bringing light, and eventually he would notice the retreat that brought on the darkness. The days weren’t what was important in this recreation of his old life, so he didn’t count them. Instead he counted the bodies. Each one had two stories, one that he knew and was always the end of, and one that he had yet to learn. He was the end of the learned tales too. In fact, he was the glue that bound the spine of the book’s two parts to make them whole, but while the binding was a release for others, it was but one more story on a shelf overflowing with tales he would remember forever.

Books. He sighed as his thoughts wandered to the library, imagining the woman he loved as she carefully chose an adventure or romance or collection of poetry. Belle’s finger would barely brush the exposed covers of each volume as she scanned the titles, weighed their merits, then moved on. Rumple loved her for that. He loved her for everything. She had been the only spark of hope in his miserable life, the only one since Bae to make him believe in himself. The unwavering faith she showed was beyond all measure and he didn’t deserve it, not before and certainly not in this place of endless suffering. 

With a sigh, Rumplestiltskin moved from the window where he had been watching the darkening sky with an empty heart. They had hit a dead end in working out the mystery of the latest prisoner, a woman who had arrived demanding gold. Her corpse had rebuilt itself, just as the others had done, but her mind seemed trapped in another realm, lost to the simple story of her need. She came to take the Dark One’s gold. There was nothing else behind it, nothing to move toward. He had tried spinning gold for her, yet she remained, the pile of it settled in her palm, winking up at them in the underworld’s orange light. She could tell of no love, no family or friends, and was the first of the bodies that Rumplestiltskin could not recall felling. He supposed the ignorance was excusable, that his memory was bound to have failed at one point or another, but the feeling of this moment nagged at him, like a fly persistently zipping around a plate of food.

He closed his eyes and stretched, then turned from the window, accepting the fact that this woman was a mystery. Hopefully a night’s rest would bring answers. At least this new curse had granted him the routine of a regular night’s sleep. In a fog of weariness he left his study and traveled the familiar path to the library, where he knew Belle would be waiting for him. She would have two books in her lap, stacked on top of each other. The one on top would be open as she read it, but the one at the bottom would be marked, a thin ribbon hanging from the place where they most recently stopped. That ribbon marked the passage of time, counted the nights for him in odd bundles of numbers, for it was the marker that tracked his evenings with Belle. She would close her open book, set it aside, and rise to join him, then the two of them would make their way to bed, where the beautiful softness of her voice would lift the words to the pages and ease him into sleep.

This tradition of reading to him before bedtime had grown from their time spent in life. Exhaustion had claimed him in the night and he’d woken her with the screams from his nightmares. Belle had tricked him into letting her read him to sleep the first time, he would always maintain that, but he would also never forget the way he felt safe with his head cradled in her lap or the sensation of her fingers brushing his scalp and combing through his hair.

“Belle?” He called out to her as he opened the library door. “Are you ready for our evening story?”

Silence greeted him. Not even the fire crackled in the fireplace. The library was as still as the stones the castle was made from. It was so empty that even his words seemed to have no place to settle inside, falling dead almost the instant they were spoken. Rumple felt as if he had called out to his love through a pillow, his hope suddenly as muffled as the sound had been. She couldn’t have heard him, but how could she hear him if he couldn’t call for her.?

Trying again, Rumplestiltskin pulled himself up straighter and cupped his mouth with his hands. His lungs filled with air before pressing out his call to her. “Belle!” The second attempt seemed as useless as the first, making his arms drop to his sides in despair.

At that moment a flash of light caught his eye and he strode to the light’s source. On one of the small tables before him a bit of parchment had settled, its surface marked with letters made in flowing script.

 _Downstairs, in the kitchen,_ the note read simply. _I needed a snack._ It wasn’t signed, but he knew the marks were made by Belle’s hand. He would know her writing anywhere, just as he would remember her voice, her eyes, and her smile. The one thing her father had ever done properly was to name her, for a beauty she truly was.

Rumple chuckled as he plucked the note from the polished wood and let a finger follow the text. Knowing that her hand had been there, following the same motion as she wrote, brought a smile to his face. Their hands could have been joined, but for the sake of time, and the idea warmed him.

Before leaving he scanned the room for the thin red flash of color that would indicate their night’s story, but couldn’t find it. Deciding she had taken the book with her, or left it in their chambers, Rumple spun on his heel and almost trotted away, boots clicking on the floor under his feet. While he walked, his hands fluttered eagerly at the fastenings of his cloak and the buttons of his shirt, opening each layer of fabric so that his scaled chest was better revealed. Lately they had been reading a romance, one containing adventure and frustrations, to be sure, but even with the story in its entirety, Belle seemed to need him more once she settled in bed with him. He was happy to encourage her need and often teased her in the evenings, swaggering in to their room like the hero of the story, all puffed out chest and proud smile.

Heart alight with the promise of their time together, Rumplestiltskin turned the corner of one of the castle’s many hallways and felt his cloak catch on a twig. The sensation forced each of his muscles instantly rigid with uncertainty, planting his feet in place. For one heartbeat he had to remind himself that there weren’t any bushes inside the castle, not before their move to the underworld and certainly none put in after. Suddenly fearful from the strangeness of this reality, he lowered his gaze and made out two white forms in the darkness. The first was a set of knuckles from a bony hand, tangled tightly in the red of his clothing, the other was the eternal smile of a skull still partially covered in rotten flesh.

The Dark One screamed as his mind made sense of what he saw, the sound echoing through the corridors and giving a voice to the helpless soul who’d lost his own so long ago. As if brought to life by the noise, the fingers crawled up the fabric hanging over his leg, a bone-spider seeking prey. It was quickly joined by another, higher up, near his hip and the two worked together to haul the bony torso of one of the soldiers into Rumple’s view. Rotten flesh clung to the arms, dangling down in long, sticky strings. There was meat of some sort on the ribs as well, a sickening combination of greens and reds draped between bony lumps that rose and fell in rhythmic patterns as if the dead man were still breathing his last.

Flailing through a spin, Rumplestiltskin managed to break free of the body and bolted down the corridor. He could hear the rattle of bone and the wet squish of flesh as everything fell to the floor behind him, but he didn’t dare to turn around. This wasn’t how the deal was supposed to work. Everyone he killed was supposed to reform on waking, appearing whole and alive. Not a single one had become an animation of death in the way he had just seen.

The next hallway was empty and Rumple stopped running to catch his breath, hand at his chest as if he were more alive than whatever had just attacked him. With the regular thud of his heart only a memory, he remembered where he was heading and who he would find at the end of his journey.

“Belle!” He cried out with all of his might, ignoring the possibility that these demons could hear him, would seek him out and attack again. “Belle!”

In a mad dash, Rumplestiltskin tore through the rest of the distance between his tower and the kitchens below, all but tumbling down steps skidding around corners. Each turn brought him face to face with an animated pile of bones, some in armor, some in the last of their decayed clothing, but all following one, unspoken rule. No matter where he was they tracked him, rattling and clattering as they lunged for his robe, caught hold of his boot, or clawed at his bare hand. Red welts began to form on his skin where the tips of bony fingers raked over it, always trying to pull him down.

He knew what they wanted. They wanted him to join them, become one of them, to drop to the ground and turn into the rotten monster that he truly was. Now he wished he’d counted the days, known the exact number of hours that he owed to these men and women who had suffered at his hand. Maybe knowing could placate them, ease them back into the slumber that they were meant to have stayed in.

“I can’t help you,” he reminded them, voice trembling with fear. “Not all of you. Not at once. Please.” Rumple’s hands lifted in a sign of conciliation as he backed down one of the halls, herded there by three suits of armor with skulls for heads. With no muscle to fill the space inside of the plates, the usual clank of metal on metal was accentuated by the pounding of solid objects on the interior. Bones, Rumple realized, striking the armor the way a cook might strike a wooden spoon to a cooking pan.

Daring to turn his back on the approaching dead, Rumplestiltskin made a mad dash for the final staircase, the twisting slabs of stone that would bring him to the castle’s main entry. He didn’t realize it was the wrong decision until the stood at the topmost point and stared down at the piles of animated carnage below. Bodies in every state of decay, every type of dress, some with weapons, some without, stumbled, strode, or crawled toward him, eyeless faces turned upward to display the grim sneer of death.

His hands, once so eager to toy with the fastenings of his clothing now clutched at the note he’d found, willing it to be a lifeline. “Belle,” he whispered, the word a prayer to anyone who would answer. It was a mere breath, barely existent and yet, somehow, the soldiers of death had picked it out among his pants and gasps. The heads of some turned to stare through the entry in the direction that would take them to the kitchens and in that moment Rumple broke.

“Belle…” Now her name came as a rasp of need that couldn’t be fulfilled. They would find her, he knew, but what could they do to her? Would she be punished for all of his wrongdoings? She might have chosen this fate, but this new punishment was his alone and Rumplestiltskin could not allow it to touch her.

“Leave her!” He screamed into the giant space before him. “You want me!”

The clattering sound of bone and metal grew in intensity before the final syllable escaped his lips. From behind him, Rumple could hear the approaching steps of the bodies he had left in his wake. Uncountable, but obvious in their number all the same. He was surrounded and with no escape he stood fast. “You take me and leave her. She is innocent. _I_ did this to all of you. _Me_. Because I wanted _everyone_ to suffer her fate!” Tears streamed down his cheeks as he confessed this cold truth. “Come! Take the Dark One who claimed your lives!”

He screamed the words as the skeletons moved forward, screamed the words as hands that were a mixture of meat and bone clawed over him once again, ripping through his cloak, tearing open his shirt, and exposing the skin and scales beneath. The cries echoed around him as he felt himself being torn open and though he could no longer see beneath the pile of bodies that had pulled him down, he knew he was now one of them, made in the image of death he’d created.

“Rumple…” His name drifted through the darkness, a song of hope in the madness, brought to life by the melody that was made by Belle’s perfect tones. “Rumple!” He heard it again, then he heard nothing more.

* * *

“Rumple!”

Something shoved Rumplestiltskin from under the pile of bodies and suddenly he was falling. He had only a moment to recognize the familiar pull of his own weight before he slammed into something hard and unforgiving. The back of his head made a cracking sound when it made contact with whatever it was, and then the press bodies was on him again, lighter this time, more forgiving.

“Rumple!” He heard Belle’s voice again. She was close, practically hovering at his ear.

“Belle,” he answered hoarsely, unsure of how he was still able to speak. “No…”

Something brushed over his face and he thrashed away from it, limbs flailing in an attempt to get free before he remembered giving himself over to the bringers of his demise. In that moment the reality of his situation hit him. There were no bodies clawing at his chest, the weight of death had lifted. “I told them to take me.” He stilled then, ready for his end in spite of the sudden change. Surely the others had pulled away in order to prepare one final, lasting blow.

“It was a dream,” Belle told him softly. “Open your eyes. You’re safe.”

Though he was certain that he no longer had eyes to open, Rumple forced his body to do as it was told. Gradually a slit of light formed in his vision, then grew until it encompassed all of Belle’s smile, caught the blue of her eyes, then framed her entire face. He blinked and glanced around, taking in the walls and the fireplace that was unsettlingly located directly at eye level. “Where am I?”

“On the floor.” The lilt in her voice told him she was amused, but trying to hide it. “You were screaming and thrashing in the covers. When I tried to wake you, you threw yourself away from me and rolled right out of bed.” Her hand caressed his face, wiping at the moisture on his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered as he pushed himself up, then turned so that his back rested against the bed and held his arms out for her to come into. Belle crawled to settle against him, resting her head on his shoulder and once there, Rumple could feel the worry in her and drew her closer still. “Tell me what’s bothering you, my love. Please. Don’t let me believe I scared you.”

Belle’s head lifted so quickly that she nearly bashed into his face. “You could never scare me, Rumple.”

“I’ve done so many horrible things,” he reminded her as if he hadn’t said the same thing every day since their arrival.

She left his side and moved to sit in front of him. Face to face, her hands cupped his cheeks and held him still so that she could bring her forehead to his without fear of his puling away. Rumple felt the rush of calm when they touched and closed his eyes to breathe in the scent of her that he spent so many years clinging to in memory alone. Once he felt secure, he opened his eyes again and found her beautiful blue pools gazing deeply into his very soul.

“Tell me about your dream.” She begged him for clarification, but with her actions, not her tone. Rumple felt completely free to set aside everything that had just happened and pretend that the nightmare didn’t still cling to him, but he couldn’t do that to her, not after all they had shared. Not any more, not ever again.

Slowly Rumple described everything, from his joy of going to bed with her to the final moments of torture. He left out no detail, wanting her to understand the torments that he lived with and all of the suffering that he knew he should never be given a rest from. “I deserved it, Belle,” he said at last. “All of it.”

“You… said something about me. While you were dreaming.”

Rumplesiltskin flinched at her words, picking apart the experience into bits of what might have been heard. “I was calling you,” he said easily, avoiding the truth that he knew she needed to hear. “I wanted you to be safe.”

“Rumple.” This was the way she said his name when she suspected deception and meant to remind him that she would take no nonsense. It was followed by silence as she waited, eyes narrowed into unwavering slits of certainty.

There was no way to hold his thoughts under that calm stare. He would forever be drawn to the strength of her, like a moth to a flame. The confession eased itself out of him, trickling at first, like a quiet mountain stream, but growing and expanding as it tumbled downhill, a rush of unchecked emotion. “All those bodies downstairs, all of those people I killed. I thought… If I just left them, if I surrounded myself with their bodies and bones… That I might never relive the moment I found you.” The feel of her remains in his hands became so real that he actually had to stare down at his upturned palms to remind himself they were empty. “One after the other, littering my life the way that memory filled my mind. But I couldn’t escape it. No matter how I tried, Belle… Your bones in my hands…”

She held him as his voice broke, as the sobs overtook him, absorbing the truth into her very being in the way that only his Belle could. “It was your pain that did this to you,” she reminded him once he was calm again. “And it is that same pain that is releasing all of these lost people back to the places where they are meant to be.”

“They don’t deserve this pain,” he breathed. “I do, but they-”

“They are victims, yes. But no more so than you are. Rumple, you were _created_ to be the villain that the strongest savior was destined to destroy. You had to _fight_ to be given this time of penance. You had the chance to walk from it and you didn’t. _That_ is the kind of man you truly are, a man who faces his wrongs and is determined to set them right, no matter the cost to himself. You’re not the Dark One any more, and you’re not a villain. You’re _my_ Rumple, the man I love and support through everything now and forever. And you _must_ stop torturing yourself. There is more here than was _your_ doing. All right?”

Rumplestiltskin pulled his head away as far has he could with the bed pressed behind him. His eyes searched deeply into Belle’s, pressing for answers. “How could you ever love me so deeply?”

“Because I know the man you truly are,” she told him in a voice that said she would never tire of repeating it.

He nodded, unable to force words past the lump in his throat. She was a miracle, a true wonder, a treasure that was his always.

Belle’s fingers suddenly flicked out to brush the hair from his face. “You’re leaving me again. Stay here.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I just can’t-”

“You can,” she insisted. “And you will.” With that declaration made, Belle got to her feet and held out a hand for him to take. “Come on. Someone downstairs is waiting on a hero and I _know_ that hero is you.”


End file.
